Ex-gang member guilty of gun sales

A one-time, reputed Chicago street gang member pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal weapons charges for profiting from the illegal sale of dozens of assault rifles and other weapons to street gangs.

Louis Rowe, 31, obtained crack cocaine in Chicago, resold it in Mississippi at prices at least double what he could get in Chicago, and then used the profits to buy guns from dealers in Mississippi, prosecutors T. Markus Funk and Joseph Alesia said.

From 1995 to 1997, Rowe and two other gang members, Charles Yarbor and Julius Sangster, bought 83 firearms in Mississippi by getting women to pose as buyers, known as "straw purchasers," the prosecutors said.

The three gang members, all felons barred by law from buying or possessing firearms, paid up to $165 for an SKS assault rifle in Mississippi and resold the firearm to Chicago gang members for as much as $2,000, prosecutors said.

About 50 of the weapons were bought from co-defendant Jimmy Doyle Wren, a Grenada, Miss., gun dealer who often operated his business, J.W.'s Second Amendment Sporting Goods, from the back of his van, prosecutors said.

Chicago police recovered 28 of the 83 guns at crime scenes, including drive-by shootings, robberies and aggravated assaults, according to authorities. An additional weapon was traced to a Florida murder, they said.

A federal jury in Chicago convicted Wren and Yarbor, and in April, sentenced them to 5 years in prison each. Sangster, who pleaded guilty and testified for the government at the trial, was sentenced to 4 years in prison.

Rowe pleaded guilty to one count each of unlawfully transporting firearms and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He faces up to 15 years in prison, a much stiffer sentence than his co-defendants, because he was the only one to plead guilty to the felony of being in possession of a firearm charge, prosecutors said.